Naomi’s Lament.

By Ihket

The sun sets against the ocean in an explosion of rusty hues filling the evening sky with unremarked brilliance and I wonder at it, I wonder at the countless times I have watched it’s path across the western horizon seeing it and loving it but never truly understanding it’s meaning until now. It saddens me to have missed so much for so long. For all my insight I have missed such a basic truth and spent too many years afraid. I am a fool.

The irony is that I have answered my own questions about life in absurd ignorance. I have easily justified my actions claiming the greater good, there is only one problem, until a few moments ago, I didn’t really know what that was.

How could I have missed it? How could I have been so without sight that I failed to recognize the consequences of my good intentions?

He deserves happiness, he deserves success and I thought I was giving it to him but instead with his life in my clumsy hands I stripped him of the very thing I sought to give. His dreams ended because I could not see beyond the moment, no that’s true. His dreams ended because I could not see past my self.

How do you apologize for destroying a life? What words could mend the damage I have done? Forgive me but there is no penance for this sin. My heart is breaking for him and for my self. I have laid waste to our lives and it is so far beyond me to understand why. My grief is extreme, his is unimaginable.

My sweet child blames himself, the light that surrounds him is dimmed by self-recrimination and his gentle spirit could be felled by it. I cannot allow that to happen, but I have no choice but to watch as it does. I gave away my ability to sooth his hurts when I gave way his life. My soul will be forever branded by the look in his eyes when he faced the world and proclaimed himself a fraud. Oh my baby I am so very sorry.

I am caught again by his eyes, the barometer of his very being, and I am startled by what I see there. He knows, there it is my heart an open book in his gaze. He knows and he understands and he forgives. He allows me to see what he knows and what he feels. I see so clearly his acceptance of what his life holds and I see his understanding of his uncertain tomorrow. Finally I see his love for me, complete, without reservation and unconditional and I am awed.

I have never doubted his path as I have these past days and he has once again with gentle care shown me how wrong that was. How could I have so little faith in him? I am his mother, a title I do not deserve but one I have and I realize how much I have to learn and how much my son has yet to teach. I will be his pupil as will those around him and perhaps we will all come to understand humanity a little better. I see wisdom in his eyes and I admire the man my son has become.